Manchin calls for assault weapons ban

Remember when he shot the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill during the 2010 campaign?

“The two Senators – both Democrats but with “A” ratings and previous endorsements from the powerful National Rifle Association gun lobby group – both spoke out to argue publicly that the death of 20 Year 2 children was a “game-changing” moment for America’s divisive gun debate.
“Never before have we seen our babies slaughtered. It’s never happened in America that I can recall, seeing this carnage,” said Senator Joe Manchin, who in 2010 released a political advert touting his NRA endorsement and showing him with a hunting rifle ‘taking aim’ at a piece of climate change legislation.” [Daily Telegraph]

29 responses to “Manchin calls for assault weapons ban”

Connecticut already has an assault rifle ban–and this gun was not on the list. Who’s bad is that? The legislators that forgot to list it? I blame them, if we are going for blame. They left this gun legal.
Does anyone know what “The weapon, Carver said, delivers bullets “designed in such a fashion (that) the energy is deposited in the tissue so the bullets stay in.” means? No penetration? Translation?

The presence of guns under the control of responsible, trained people reduces the possibility of violent crime to almost zero. No one pulls out a weapon in a gun shop – you would have to be a complete moron to do that.

Irrational leftists believe that the way to protect children is to ban the one thing which can keep them safe. Are children less valuable than a bank account? Children deserve better than the mentally defective people running our government.

The world is full of nutcases. Lefties can either deal with it or stick their heads up their asses in their imaginary Bambi world.

Too tragic to call this a joke but — if I recall, Lanza used a Glock pistol in the school. The “assault weapon”, a .223 so probably a Ruger Mini-14 but I don’t know, was found in the car.
So the gun-nutters want to take the gun that wasn’t used away from the people who didn’t hurt anyone. Check.

It was a Bushmaster. I read today the company divesting itself of that particular gun. Lie enough and you don’t need gun control laws. You can “shame” the company into not producing the evil gun.
If you take away guns, the alternatives are more lethal. No one, of course, really cares.

If we’re going to respond to Newtown with *honest* legislation, there will have to be two elements: (1) the legislation must be such that it would have prevented the Newtown shootings and (2) it must establish a category of permissible ‘defense weapons’ which are capable of effectively responding to the use of ‘assault weapons’.

The fact that (1) and (2) are impossible shows that there’s a different agenda going on with many of those who want “more gun control”.

Don’t take this as harsh, but consider the notion of locking people up for murder before they commit murder. Or for having ideas which an expert thinks will make them likely to commit murder. Autistic video gamers beware! The Constitution would have something to say about that, which is one of the reasons why we can’t force mental health measures on people who don’t want them. Besides, there’s no such thing as ‘sanity in a pill’, so incarceration is the only practical “control” option.

There is a difference between locking people up before they commit murder and allowing individuals who have no contact with reality to wonder about. The constitution says “due process”. We allow people who are psychotic to plead “not guilty by reason of mental defect” yet somehow we imagine in our tiny little brains that said individual can rationally “chose” to eat garbage and live under an underpass.
These individuals are not responsible for homicide because they don’t know the difference between right and wrong, yet somehow they can know it’s right for them to eat garbage and live under bridges? Read my last sentence again–you are allowing people who are irrational to kill with impunity while arguing they can actually make a rational decision. Either get rid of “mental defect” defense OR admit these individuals cannot live on their own. You can’t have it both ways.
Errors are made with commitments and abuses occur. So do mass homicides by mentally ill people. How is it better to have 20 children killed than a person committed in error? The only reason I know of is you can blame God or fate or whatever for the dead children, but you would have to take responsibility for the commitment. The murders are due to lack of action, which people just brush off as “I wasn’t involved”. It’s like watching someone drowning and doing nothing. It’s not your fault, right?

My former neighbor was assaulted in her home by a neighbor boy of high school age with a knife. Fortunately, she wasn’t physically harmed. When the police arrived and investigated, they TOOK NO ACTION.

It seems the boy “DIDN’T TAKE HIS MEDICINE.” Quite literally, the lives of the people in that area are dependent on the boy remembering, or feeling like, taking his medicine. This circumstance is ubiquitous in the U.S.

I am torn on this “didn’t take his medication” thing. Medication is not all it’s praised as being. However, if the person is allowed to roam about unfettered in society as long as they take their medication, then the medication needs to be monitored.
This whole “mental health” issue is a problem. If it’s “mental”, then why medicate? If it’s physical, why not call it “being sick”? This leads to all kinds of double standards. I am diabetic. If I take too much insulin, pass out and crash into a building, the state can take my driver’s license. It doesn’t matter that modern medicine cannot prevent this in all cases and that it is a verifiable disease. You pass out, you can’t drive. I suspect if I claimed mental illness–hallucinations because I forgot my meds–all would be forgiven (regulations say it might not). First, we have to decide what is an “illness” and then treat illnesses the same. Politically, that’s called suicide…….

Excellent comment from “ralphcramdo”.
I am still going with the belief that the politicians who basically rejoice that little children are killed so they can outlaw more guns are more evil that the perpetrator of the action. How soulless are you to walk all over dead children to advance a political agenda? These are the people we should fear.

There’s one aspect to the “well-regulated militia” language of the 2d Amendment which as far as I know has been completely overlooked. How can you have a militia, at all, without them having ‘assault weapons’? However you’d like to define ‘assault weapon’, which might legitimately be compared to what the military uses.

This video shows how taking the barrel and receiver (the operating parts) of a “hunting rifle” and replacing the gunstock and other parts turns it into an “assault weapon” as defined in various laws. It operates in exactly the same way as it did when it was a completely legal hunting rifle.

The Firearms Act of 1934 essentially makes it illegal for a civilian to own a _real_ assault weapon (a machine gun) except in extremely limited circumstances. True “assault weapons” are only owned by the military and police.

The features of military assault weapons that have migrated to civilian rifles generally are helpful features for those who wish to use such a firearm for home/personal defense, as laser sights and flashlights can be conveniently attached (something that’s not as easy with the “hunting rifle” form).

The public is simply being fooled by “scary looking” guns being classified as “assault weapons” — then feeling safer when such guns are banned. The unstable, insane can and will continue to commit these horrible incidents with our without “assault weapons” — or even without guns at all. Google “mass killing with knife” and you’ll find plenty of such events.

The real problem is the “fake” gun-free zones that anti-gun advocates have set up in schools and shopping malls. These give the mentally unstable active shooters a known location that is “safe” for them to kill at will. Indeed, a few days before the Newtown incident, a shooter entered a mall at Clackamas Oregon, killing two and wounding one, he was confronted by a citizen with a legally carried concealed weapon — the shooter immediately turned his own gun on himself ending his spree before it became much more serious. See this opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required):

Yes, assault weapons are based on looks. People who make laws know little about guns–and maybe that’s not a bad thing. There are many gun laws that are completely worthless and do little or no harm to gun ownership. Since evil people will continue to celebrate the death of innocent people because it furthers their cause (you cannot advance the cause of “gun control” without innocent people being shot–you have to have dead bodies), leaving them ignorant of weapons at least gives gun owners a chance. Since most everything politicians and Hollywood does is cosmetic, let them stick with appearances. (I would note that Hollywood finally learned to KEEP THEIR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER when handling guns. Congratulations.)
As noted, “true” military weapons in the hands of civilians is not that common. There’s the background check, the tax stamp for each gun and the fact that the government knows who owns every single one of these guns (as much as the government knows anything). Using a legally obtained automatic weapon in the commission of a crime is like taping your driver’s license to the bank door as you enter to rob it.